In the next 3 episodes, Dan and Jack explore the Prep-Trade-Reflect system endorsed by the coaching team at Topstep.

Download and Listen Options

You can listen and download all episodes of the Limit Up! Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Use the links below to get the latest episode, “Prep-Trade-Relect: Part 1”

Spotify: Listen to the latest episode!

Apple Podcasts: Listen to the latest episode!

About Limit Up!

Limit Up! is a podcast brought to you by Topstep about trading, trading psychology, trading life, and pretty much whatever else the wonderful world of markets has to offer. It’s hosted by two former professional traders, Jack and Dan, who still dabble in futures, forex, options, political betting—they basically love to follow the action. They’ll teach you how to trade, but more importantly, how to develop the habits that make traders good. Risk Disclosure: https://www.Topstepquantumhub.com/risk-disclosure/

Topstep is the premiere funding opportunity for traders looking to make the most market opportunities without risking their own capital. When traders pass the completely-objective Trading Combine®, Topstep funds them with proprietary money. Guaranteed. Beyond funding, we seek to instill better habits in our traders (hence the Limit Up! Podcast and other educational resources). Topstep has been based in Chicago since 2012.

Jack Pelzer is a co-host of Limit Up! He traded as part of a U.S. Treasury group for 7 years at Chopper Trading and DRW. After leaving the industry, he became a Writing Fellow and Senior Contributing Writer for The Onion. He is now the Head of Content at Topstep.

Dan Hodgman is a co-host of Limit Up! Before coming to Topstep, Dan traded 30 Yr Treasury Options and Yield Spreads. Before that, he served in the United States Marine Corps, where he simultaneously managed his own Futures Account, applying the skills he grew up learning from clerking on the trading floor. Now Dan works with the Traders here at Topstep as a Performance Coach and is a regular on the Daily Market Recap.

The post Prep-Trade-Reflect Part 1: “Prep” appeared first on Topstep.

We’ve laid out a roadmap for you, and your path to success starts right here. Prep–Trade–Reflect™ is a step-by-step process to help you strengthen your trading skills and build better habits, all while you work toward your goal of earning a Funded Account®. 

As an industry leader and the premiere futures funding opportunity available, at Topstep, we pride ourselves on the trading education and development resources we make available to our traders and trading community at large. We are committed to our role of providing a safe environment for traders to participate in the futures markets and being your path to a better lifestyle. 

Prep–Trade–Reflect (PTR) is the mantra we teach by. It is the cornerstone of our coaching philosophy and technique. We use PTP as a working guide to help you develop an optimized routine, build better habits, and confidently lead you through each trading day.

What is it Prep–Trade–Reflect™?

Prep–Trade–Reflect is your path to finding consistency in the futures markets. Regardless of the timeframe you are trading, PTP breaks down the trading session into three distinct segments; your pre-market preparation, the time you set aside to execute trades, and your post-market self-review of your trading performance.

Because we believe in “learning by doing,” you have the opportunity to use this process while completing your evaluation in the Topstep Trading Combine®. And our team of coaches, alongside Coach T, your personalized digital performance coach, will be there with you every step of the way.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these segments with a few examples from our team of traders.

Prep

A significant indicator of how you will perform in the markets is how well prepared you are going into the trading session. Your daily preparation starts with a routine. A highly optimized routine should be designed to set you up for success for the rest of the day. Routines are also valuable in helping to build stronger and more sustainable habits. 

For example, you might try going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, allocating a specific amount of time to studying charts before the market opens, and creating a custom game plan for every trading session.

Trade

After you’ve done your Prep work, it’s time to put your plan into practice. First, aside from making good trades, your most critical job as a trader is capital preservation. So, to avoid things like FOMO and overtrading, it’s just as important to know how and when you’re getting out of a trade before you get into one. 

Having an exit strategy before you enter the market takes the human emotion out of a trade and adds a layer of insulation that will allow you to give the position some room to breathe without panicking when the market doesn’t immediately go your way.

And, remember, no one is perfect. Not every trade will be a winner. Try to remain flexible and open-minded (our coaches can help with this), and be prepared to take a loss. Again, your job is to manage risk in a way that will allow you to continue trading again tomorrow. 

Reflect

For many new traders, an honest daily self-assessment might be the most overlooked part of the process. How can we learn from our mistakes if we don’t recognize how and why we made them?

We recommend starting a journal to document your trading activity throughout the day. A basic trade journal will outline how, when, and why you took each trade. You can also track your results and even go a step further by making a note of your mindset throughout the trade process.

This is your opportunity to build on your strengths, get more familiar with your weaknesses, and make the necessary adjustments to ensure you’re a better trader tomorrow than you were today. 

Our Coaches Are Real Traders

To help shepherd you on your trading journey, we’ve put together a stellar team of performance coaches with over 100 years of combined trading experience between them, going back to the old trading floors of the CBOT and CME. Our coaches are real traders, and they’re here to share their knowledge with you.

To complement our team of coaches, we’ve also created a personalized digital trading coach, Coach T, to help you build your trading plan and provide insight into your day-to-day trading habits. 

From live trading to group coaching to one-on-one coaching, we have plenty of FREE resources to help keep you on the right path to finding consistency and success as a futures trader.

Now get out there and profit!

The post Prep–Trade–Reflect™ appeared first on Topstep.

Coach TCoach T – Your Personalized Performance Coach

MEET COACH T

COACH T WANTS TO HELP YOU PREP

COACH T – TIME TO TRADE

COACH T – IT’S TIME TO REFLECT

COACH T – SETTING UP YOUR TRADERIQ TRADING PLAN

The post Coach T – Your Personalized Performance Coach appeared first on Topstep.

Meet Jeff, champion of the Topstep Trading Combine® and a newly funded trader. Not long ago, Jeff was gracious enough to sit down with Topstep Performance Coach Dan Hodgman to talk about the markets and his experience with Topstep. If you’re new to futures or trading in general, then you definitely don’t want to miss this interview. 

Wisdom Beyond His Years

Like most young traders, Jeff was excited when he discovered the futures markets and couldn’t wait to start making some money. Then he found out about Topstep, and it blew his mind. “Wait, all I need to do is learn how to trade, and you’re going to give me money?” Unbelievable, right?!

I think Jeff hit the nail on the head with that statement, but there’s a lot more we’re prepared to do to help you start raking in consistent profits. We’ve been busy researching and developing new tools and resources that we’re confident can help any trader improve their skills and strategies.

Stick To The Plan

Take Jeff’s advice by starting the day with a routine and stick to a trading plan. Then, if your strategies aren’t working out the way you planned, try making small adjustments before you abandon them altogether. 

Do you need some motivation to put your trading plan together? Then, look no further than our very Coach T—your real-time personalized digital performance coach—for some tips on how to prep, trade, and reflect on your trading performance each day.

Overnight success is extremely rare in this business. We’re in it for the long haul, and we hope you are too. But, as we always say, trading isn’t easy, and if you don’t put the time in to learn, it will likely only get more challenging and expensive. That’s where Topstep comes in. Our job is to provide you with a safe place to learn without suffering any overly costly mistakes. So let us help you on your trading journey!

Trade Well!

The post Meet Funded Trader Jeff R. From Massachusetts! appeared first on Topstep.

In part one of our Coach T Prep–Trade–Reflect™ series, we talked about the importance of establishing a well-rounded routine and having an optimized trading plan before you start the trading day. Now we’re going to take things a step further and talk about how the TraderIQ Trading Plan in the Topstep dashboard can benefit you in your journey to becoming a professional trader.

Setting Up Your TraderIQ Trading Plan

Once you’ve done the leg work and determined what times you will be trading, which markets you will be participating in, and you have your workspace set up for maximum efficiency, you will be ready to start putting together your daily trading plan.

Daily Loss Limit

Suppose you’re like the majority of retail futures and forex traders out there. In that case, you probably don’t have access to an unlimited supply of trading capital, so it’s essential to set limits on losses and targets for profits.

In the Trading Combine® and Funded Account®, daily and weekly loss limits are already pre-defined for you. So, wouldn’t it make sense to get ahead of the curve and set your own limits so you’re never at risk of breaking a rule and losing your account?

Take, for instance, the Topstep $50K Trading Combine. The daily loss limit is $1,000. If you hit that number, then you broke a rule and just lost your account. At some point, you have to call a bad trading day for what it is; a bad trading day. If you’re down $900, what do you think the chances are of leveraging the remaining $100 you have left into a break-even or breakout trading day. Let me tell you, the odds are slim. Cut your losses and reflect on your trading. Stay alive to fight another day. That’s the game.

Max Number of Trades

It’s easy to start firing away at every setup you see when you’re down money. But, on the other hand, you won’t typically get an itchy trigger finger when you’re having a decent trading day. So why do we do it?

A few years ago, in a BBC article, Chris Baraniuk explained why gamblers get high even when they lose. According to one of Baraniuk’s sources, Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University, “even when you’re losing while you’re gambling, your body is still producing adrenalin and endorphins.” Of course, the adrenaline rush you receive when you’re losing a lot of money is just as intense as the rush when you’re making a lot of money, but our reactions to it are slightly different. That’s where impulsive trading comes into play.

We will take a lesson from a recent funded trader interview with Tawnya M. from New Mexico. Chances are that the days you make a lot of trades are the days you lose the most money. So Tawnya’s first piece of advice is to figure out the average number of trades you make per day and then try to cut it in half. Another excellent recommendation is to start journaling each trade you make. If you’re trading so much that you can’t keep an accurate record in your journal, then you’re probably trading too much.

Max Losing Streak

Any trader will tell you that when are you’re on a losing streak, it’s best to take a step back and reevaluate what you’re doing. If your trade setups all have the same risk parameters, then you know ahead of time what your max losing streak should be before you shut it down for the day. 

If you don’t know, then figure it out quickly. Letting your emotions take over is one of the quickest ways to blow out of a trading account. Set a limit and stick to it!

We Built This For You—Use It!

Our job is to help you set yourself up for success. Setting up your TraderIQ Trading Plan and monitoring your daily stats and scores will put you on the right track. Remember, passing through the Trading Combine to earn funding is only the beginning. Long-term success in this business requires thinking far beyond a single winning trade, and Topstep is here to guide you every step of the way.

Trade Well!

The post Coach T – Setting Up Your TraderIQ Trading Plan appeared first on Topstep.

It’s that time of day. You put in the time to prep for the trading session, you did the work trading, but there’s still one thing left to do before you shut off your screens. The closing bell doesn’t mean that the day is over; now is the time to reflect on your performance. 

How did your day go? Did you complete your morning routine? Did you follow your trading plan and strategy, or did you improvise and start to wing it? If you could grade today’s performance, what kind of score would you give yourself? 

In Part 3 of the Coach T™ Prep–Trade–Reflect™ series, we’re going to talk about a few easy ways to track and evaluate your trading performance right from your Topstep dashboard.

Don’t Fudge The Numbers

To grow and improve as a trader, you need to understand your behaviors. An honest self-assessment of your habits, accomplishments, and failures is essential to track your actual progress over time. For most traders, the best way to measure which direction their trading path is heading is by keeping a journal and then going back through the days/weeks/months to see how their habits have changed. 

Take a look at pro athletes and how they tend to make extraordinary feats look easy. What you don’t see is the countless hours spent practicing, drilling, and perfecting techniques. Like they say, “practice makes perfect,” and fundamentals are the glue that holds a team together. The same is true for a trader, and you might be surprised how constantly evaluating yourself can help bring consistency to your trading.

Coach T™ Is Going To Make This Easy For You

With an exciting suite of TraderIQ features, Coach T, your personalized digital performance coach, has the tools you need to evaluate your trading performance and help you build stronger, more sustainable habits. 

Discipline Score

In the Coach T “Prep” article, we talked about setting up your TraderIQ Trading Plan. Based on the parameters you set for your Daily Loss Limit, Max Number of Trades, and Max Losing Streak, we’re going to calculate a daily Discipline Score to show you how well you followed your own rules.

Trader Journey Chart

The Trader Journey chart in your Topstep dashboard will track your Discipline Scores over time to give you an excellent visualization of your progress.

Analytics

Are you curious about your average profitability per trade? You should be. Coach T’s suite of analytics tools shows you your:

• Average profit of all winning trades
• Your reward-to-risk ratio based on all trades made
• The winning percentage for all of your trades
• The average loss of all losing trades

We’re Not Playing ‘Follow the Leader’

Knowing what kind of trader you are is half the battle, and Coach T is designed to help you figure it out. Whether you’re a grinder, zen master, or gunslinger, it’s always important to know your strengths and weaknesses and manage your strategies around them.

Guru’s and high-priced trade callers will cost you more money in the long run than they’re worth. Take the time to invest in yourself and build a solid foundation for future success based on your own trading performance, not someone else’s.

Coach T’s Team Has The Resources You Need

We’ve put together an entire library of trading resources to help guide you throughout your trading journey. And don’t forget about Coach Hoag’s FREE weekly group coaching sessions, which are a CAN’T-MISS for new traders in the Trading Combine®.

Remember, you did the work, but the grind never stops. Learn from your mistakes and get better every single day!

Trade Well!

The post Coach T – It’s Time To Reflect appeared first on Topstep.

Hello, traders. Today we’re going to talk a bit about how to set yourself up for success each and every day. It all starts with your preparation habits. Think about it like painting a room in your house. The prep work is the most critical and time-consuming part of the project; taping, laying tarp, priming, picking colors, getting the right brushes and rollers. The more prepared you are, the easier the actual painting is. The same goes for trading.

Routines Set You Up For The Day

When you sit down to get to work, you should be focused and have a clear head. Sounds easy enough, right? Some people can just roll out of bed in the morning and get right to it. However, for the rest of us, we need some time to get the blood and oxygen flowing before we start making any serious trading decisions.

One way to put yourself in the right mindset is to have a well-established routine. Not only will starting the day being productive set the tone for the rest of your day, but it can also help to lower stress levels. 

Building healthy and sustainable habits isn’t always easy. It requires discipline, but a structured process can help bring consistency to your trading. Plan your meals ahead of time, exercise, meditate, stretch, study, whatever… These are just a few examples of the things you can include in your daily routine. Start small, so you don’t burn out. Eventually, you will find that you’ve created the ultimate plan of attack for the trading day.

How Prepared Are You, Really?

First things first. What are your expectations for the trading day? What markets are you going to trade? Do you have a loss limit or a profit target in place? These are questions you need to ask yourself. Let’s run through a shortlist of preliminary “prep” questions to get you started.

1. What market are you going to trade?

Playing to your strengths is a big piece of the puzzle. Do you prefer slower-moving markets like Treasuries or the high-flying moves of the speedy Nasdaq? You also have to take into consideration the size of the account that you’re trading. High volatility and an under-funded trading account are a recipe for disaster. Start with a slow market if you have to, just to get your feet wet. No one wants to blow out of their account on the first day because they don’t know how to handle volatility!

2. What time of day will you be trading?

Is trading a full-time or part-time job for you? Markets move differently based on the time of day. This is a real thing. Do you know when the bulk of the daily volume trades in the markets you’re tracking? Well, you should!

If you’re doing this part-time and only have time to trade after-hours, you might want to spend some time researching a market that trades a little heavier overnight. If you’re a full-time trader, you need to be aware of daytime events like economic report releases and the “New York Lunch Hour” to set a schedule for when NOT to be in the market during the day.

3. What does your trading environment look like?

Maybe you trade from home in a workspace you set up yourself or go to an outside office to get out of the house. Do you prefer to trade alone, or do you like having a group of people around to share ideas?

You should be trading in a place that best suits your character traits. That’s why it’s also important to spend time on self-reflection before getting started trading. The more you know yourself, the more likely you will be to set yourself up for success. A toxic environment can poison your trading. 

Set Up Your TraderIQ Trading Plan

In your Topstep dashboard, under the TraderIQ tab, you now have the ability to set up and edit your very own trading plan. The new trading plan features include:

1. Personal Daily Loss Limit – So you know when to stop trading for the day.
2. Max Number of Trades Per Day – To keep you focused on better trade opportunities.
3. Max Losing Streak – So your emotions don’t take over and get you in trouble.

Test That Sh*t Out, First!

Did you know the Trading Combine and Funded Account both come with a complimentary Practice Account? Well, now you do. 

When you’re developing new setups and strategies, you don’t trade them live until you’ve backtested and simulated them. How else would you know if they work? We know this, so we added the Practice Account feature to give you a leg up on trade discovery.

Our Practice Account uses real-time exchange data to simulate a live trading environment. You can customize your platform to look identical to your Trading Combine or Funded Account setup and reset it as many times as you want. 

Coach T’s Team Has Your Back

We’ve put together an entire library of trading resources to help guide you throughout your trading journey. Between our blog, videos, podcast, FREE weekly group coaching sessions, and dedicated Facebook community, I’m sure we have an answer to your questions laying around somewhere.

For more actionable daily content, Coach Hoag and Coach Hodge go live every morning before the opening bell for the Market Forecast and again in the afternoon for the Daily Market Recap. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and you’ll get notifications each time we go live!

Plan your work, and work your plan. We’ll be here to help you every step of the way. Trade Well!

The post Coach T Wants To Help You Prep appeared first on Topstep.

Your full-time, personalized, automated extension of our Performance Coaches is here, and it’s very cool. Like everything we’ve built at Topstep, Coach T™ was built by traders for traders. 

Good habits are so important when you’re trading, and I’ve learned it’s a hell of a lot easier to develop those habits and stick to a solid routine with someone by your side. Coach T gives you tools equally useful for your big-picture trading journey and for navigating every single trading day. When used together, you’ll be able to develop an effective routine: Prep—Trade—Reflect™. 

You’ll hear a lot more about Prep—Trade—Reflect over the next few weeks. Here’s a quick breakdown of the routine and the Coach T tools that will help you become a smarter, stronger trader: 

Prep

You need to set a trading plan— and, most importantly, stick to it! With TraderIQ, you can craft your plan and be held accountable. Your Discipline Score helps you monitor how well you are trading against your daily loss limit, max number of trades, and max losing streak. Unsure of your plan? Test it in the Practice Account. 

Trade

During your trading day, discipline and strong habits are key. Coach T helps you build both so you can leave rule breaks in the past. Turn on Alerts so Coach T can nudge you throughout the day. Think of Alerts as Coach T guiding you from the sidelines. Need to catch your breath or work on strategy? Head to the Practice Account. 

Reflect  

Coach T’s Analytics helps you reflect on your trading so you can make smarter decisions tomorrow. With personalized data and insights, Coach T helps you regularly and consistently evaluate whether your strategy is leading to long-term profitability. Think of using Analytics as reviewing game tape. Take what you’ve learned, and make improvements while you Prep. 

I’m confident that these tools will help you, and we’re excited to give our traders a new type of Performance Coaching. As always, you have our team to support you every step of the way. Over the next few weeks, we’ll go into detail about each step in the daily trading routine, Prep—Trade—Reflect. By the end of the next few weeks, you will have a stronger strategy and the tools you need to stay disciplined. Feel free to visit our Help Center to learn more about Coach T!

Trade well, and always trade for tomorrow. 

The post Meet Coach T appeared first on Topstep.